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100There are scenes as true as movies can make them, and even when the story develops thriller elements, they are redeemed, because the movie isn't about what happens, but about why.
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100When it comes to the realistic portrayal of the complex process of grief, most actresses are at a loss. Sissy Spacek is decidedly not most actresses.
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100A lot of actors are labeled "brave" for taking on difficult scripts like this, but Spacek is the real thing: an artist first, without vanity, and a movie star almost by default.
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100The surehandedly wrought, beautifully acted, almost unbearably tense In the Bedroom is a rare film, not to be missed.
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100The uncoagulated anguish of parents mourning the death of a child has rarely been more powerfully depicted than in the collected vignettes of grief, rage, and retribution that make up the riveting domestic drama In the Bedroom.
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100Demanding, harrowing and very, very real. You won't shake its impact easily.
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100With performances that will raise the hairs on the back of your head, it's a film that knows the private geography of love, grief and obsession.
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100When a film as profoundly quiet as In the Bedroom comes along, it feels almost miraculous, as if a shimmering piece of art had slipped below the radar and through the minefield of commerce.
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100The compositions, the editing, the lighting, the sound, the music: everything seems meticulously considered, conjuring up a hushed intimacy that instantly sucks you in.
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100The best movie of the last several years: the most evocative, the most mysterious, the most inconsolably devastating.
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100The kind of movie they don't make any more -- a seriously beautiful, deliberately paced drama that meanders for a while at the pace of a summer romance, then explodes with phenomenal force.
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100Field achieves so convincing a picture of everday normality that when violence breaks out one feels the same disbelief that one feels when it breaks out in life. [26 Nov 2001, p. 121]
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90For all its flaws, In the Bedroom is an unusual accomplishment, a serious drama about violence and morality that plays out with a fatalistic intensity somewhere between Greek tragedy and film noir.
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90An uncommonly good movie - a thriller that transcends thrills to become a heartfelt and heart-stopping personal drama.
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89The actors, as a powerful and convincing ensemble, are equally understated and just as devastating.
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88It sneaks up on you and shakes you: a tale of the cold hell surging up beneath that windy, sensuous Wyeth landscape.
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88Tremendously affecting on several levels, In the Bedroom is must-see viewing for anyone who complains Hollywood doesn't make movies for grownups.
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88Bedroom succeeds with performances that get some of their power from imaginative casting.
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88Field does what most American directors don't: He shows people at work, in the day-to-day activity unmarked by excitement.
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83Like Kubrick, Field doesn't make any moral judgments about his characters, and his film remains stubbornly enigmatic. It can be read as a high-class revenge thriller, an ode to the futility of vengeance or almost anything in between.
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80Meticulously observed and devastatingly well-acted.
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80Field made a thriller about what we are capable of in the name of hatred -- and of love.
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80Goes the distance to avoid banalizing the dilemma of a reasonable couple unhinged by unreasonable events.
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80Beautifully acted by a diverse ensemble, this Good Machine production is carefully crafted and deliberately paced.
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80If Dubus' work always resembled some sort of literary therapy session, as has often been said, then Field's version requires grief counseling. It is, at times, that devastating.
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75Directed by newcomer Todd Field, who has a sensitive eye and a knack for storytelling.
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75It's a human drama, drawn in such careful emotional detail, its two acts of violence -- one shown, one not -- are almost incidental.
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60A courageous film, especially from a first-time director, and deserves all the audience support it can attract. It’s a People Story, and it’s About Something. However, it’s also something of a heavy sit.
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50Increasingly unconvincing, In the Bedroom turns genteel rabble-rouser. Field's leisurely buildup forestalls but doesn't prevent his movie's mutation into a granola "Death Wish."
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50Short of good, better than awful, it opens brilliantly, then just goes on, toward self-negating absurdity.
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50A killer ending does not a movie make, and ultimately In the Bedroom may be more interesting to talk about than sit through.
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User score distribution:
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Positive: 32 out of 46
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Mixed: 6 out of 46
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Negative: 8 out of 46
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Dr.K.5
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MattS.9
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CreedenceB.10